Cabinets of Costume (May-June 2017) [exhibition]

The exhibition, Cabinets of Costume was created and curated to highlight two archival study collections held at Birmingham City University. The first is the Art, Design and Media Archives, and the Birmingham School of Art Dress Archive, including a gathering of dress bequeathed by Kate Elizabeth Bunce to the School of Art, Birmingham in 1927. The exhibition was curated by Louise E P Chapman and Zoe Robertson and undertaken as part of an international conference, Culture, Costume, and Dress at Birmingham City University. Students were briefed with creating a ‘material echo’ or a ‘ghost’ through the object-based study of dress. Their ‘ghost’ would then be exhibited within the Cabinets of Costume exhibition alongside their sketches and patterns to evidence their process and practice.